Eating Habits of the Past vs. Now

[ValleyBoy]

No....

a stone of the 14 pound variety. Its a weight measurement...

I've always wondered what the conversion was.

 

[Lady Day]

I think there is no food in todays food. Its all about chemically tasting better and longer shelf life. Sure there was junk food in the old days, but it was made with real stuff.

I think the sheer processing of todays mass market food is one of the biggest culprits in how people eat. Next would be portions. People ate everything on their place, cause their parents told them to, but they also abided by the 'eyes bigger than the stomach' truth, and leftovers were your friend.

Now people eat HUGE portions for pennies, and think it all has to be eater in one sitting. Do we listen to our body tell us we are full? Not much anymore.

LD

 

[Nick D]

My grandparents, for the most part, never changed their eating habits. Papa was Italian, and Grandma was a born-again Italian (she was German). Meals were not small, but weren't huge, they were just right. Of course, on special occassions Grandma really went to town. You don't see that much pasta in one place very often. Papa also had a sweet tooth of epic proportions. But both were small (Grandma was tiny). I agree with the proportions theory.

 

[Martinis at 8]

"I'd rather wear Italian than eat Italian".

My new fitness motto.

 

[Haversack]

I too believe that it is the much more sedentary lifestyle of the present age which is responsible. However, another thing to consider is that the nature of even the unprocessed foods we eat today is not same as it was 60-70 years ago. A steak today is not the same as a steak then. 70 years ago most cattle were grass-fed as opposed to grain fed. A grass diet puts on a different type of beef fat than does a grain diet. It also dosen't require the variety of medical and dietary suppliments which are necessary for cattle on a grain diet. (However, cattle fatten quicker on grain.) Much more of our diet comes from large-scale agribusiness as opposed to small scale independent farmers. The food species raised today are first and foremost chosen for their rapid growth, long shelf life, and tolerance of handling, as opposed to being grown for their taste or nutritional value. The FDA used to rate the nutrional value of foodstuffs raised in different parts of the country. There could be some significant differences. It dosn't anymore. Regardless, a carrot is not a carrot is not a carrot. Differences matter.

Pigeon Toe above mentioned buttermilk. Back then, buttermilk was the liquid left over after butter was churned. Today it is specifically manufactured using a particular culture to give it its flavour.

One of the things you find with food in history is that often food and dishes may evolve and change over time but keep the same name. After enough time there can be a significant difference. For example: Harissa in the 13th C. was a sweet spice mix, today it is a fiery spice mix. This can trip you up if you are ever cooking a Moroccan dish.

Haversack.

 

[Paisley]

(However, cattle fatten quicker on grain.)

So do people.

 

[Haversack]

True. But we don't have the gut necessary to digest grass even with dietary and medical supplements.

Haversack.

 

[mikepara]

You lost a stone?! Kidney or otherwise?

Regards,

J

I had a little self side bet that if someone responded they would mention kidney!

 

[Leading Edge]

S T R E S S ! !

I most certainly agree with others who have noted that the source and quality of what constitutes our diet today are major contributors to the chronic gastrointestinal ailments, obesity, heart disease, and a host of other conditions. I believe, however, that stress is the single most overlooked source of today's health issues.

Since that cookbook was in general use, our society has introduced a veritable plethora of "time saving" contraptions, all promoted as improving the quality of our lives. Will someone, anyone please tell me where all that saved time is because in spite of the dishwasher, the microwave, the automobile, the washer, the dryer, the food processor, the bread machine, the miracle fabrics, the telephone, the cell phone, the highways, the sixty (80 - 90) mile/hour speed limits. . . I AM STRESSED FROM FITTING TWO DAY'S WORK INTO TWENTY-ONE HOURS! ! ! - EVERYDAY. :rage: (Regrettably, I have not been able to convince my body to function on less than three hours sleep.)

My theory:
Back in the day, there was a better balance between the demands put on the body by "work" (anything the body is required to do) and the demands put on the body by "food work" (all that the body has to do to process food).

Back in the day, people took the time to bless the food, to appreciate in those moments the serendipity of abundance, to thank in those moments all those whose efforts contributed the our meal especially those who made the ultimate sacrifice that we may sit in safety and peace to eat.

Back in the day, people gave their attention to the meal, not the worst of world brought directly to your home by the evening news.

Back in the day, people took time after the meal "to clean up" continuing their conversations of the minutia of the day, their plans or expectations for the future, and relaxed in that gentle companionship and/or alpha state that comes from doing tasks that require only middling guidance to be done and done well.

Back in the day, we did not stress ourselves with the multistimulus of televisions and electronically contrived music during or after a meal, but enjoyed board and other simple games, conversation, home made music, or quiet walks communing with natural panoramas and neighborhood ambiance.

Back in the day, we did not stress ourselves while we ate with worry about getting there faster as much as faithfully praying to get there.

Back in the day, we lived with less stress.

 

[Daisy Buchanan]

I agree Leading Edge. Stress is a major contributor. However, it's not that people didn't have stressful situations back then. However in todays fast paced world we almost know too much. What people lived without back in the day wasn't something that caused stress, it was just a fact of life. It was a common occurrence to live without. In todays world if we are living without we are all too well aware of what we are missing. So, we work harder and stress ourselves out to live in this expected lifestyle. There is no more "make do and mend". Most everybody in America is aware of high technology and other expensive things like fancy cars and big houses. The technological revolution brings visions of grandeur to more areas of the world than not. So, people know what they want, and they know what they don't have. Verses back in the day people lived in close knit communities, they knew what their neighbors had and maybe what the people in the next town had, but not much more than that. Yes, maybe there was competition between neighbors for who had the newest refrigerator, but overall the types of stress were different. People were happy to be able to sit down with their families and have a meal together, and their doors would be open to their neighbors as well, even if money was tight. OK, what I'm trying to say is that the fast paced high tech environment that we live in today causes many of us to have certain wants. It's like we all want what we can't have, or what the millionaire on TV is bragging about. Our wants and desires have completely changed. Things weren't simple back then, of course their were plenty of worries. However it seems that the worries and stress of back then had a solution that was within reach. Today we work and work and work, but there's always something more that we want. Golly, I hope this makes some sort of sense! I'm not doing a very good job at explaining myself
Being someone with a GI illness I know this first hand. Although Crohn's disease isn't caused by poor diet, it has been proven that CD is an auto-immune disease and has to do with genetics. However CD and many other auto-immune diseases are exacerbated by poor diet and definitely stress. Two of the worst Crohn's flares that I had occurred when I was working in a very stressful environment and when I was in dental hygiene school. In both situations I was working insane hours, very long days, eating terribly and under an elevated amount of stress. To keep my disease in remission I have to stick to a strict schedule, eat properly (I'm terrible at this!) and try to avoid stressful situations. The doctors actually prescribe me valium to take at night, just so I can make sure I have some time during the day that's not stressful!
It is funny to me that with all the amazing inventions over the past 50 years, inventions of high technology that were supposed to make things easier, we actually have much higher levels of stress than 50 years ago.

 

[Kimberly]

Daisy and Leading Edge I aree with both of you.

Daisy you are spot on about the cloesness of family. I yearn for that yet can never seem to get it. My kids are out and about or I am too exhausted after working all day to sit down and prepare and have a meal w/ them because when I get home I have to do laundry, dishes, drive them here and there, etc. Many times they have already eaten. On Sunday's I cook meals and freeze them and most often they have heated up their dinners and are busy doing other things.

I try and do it with my mother, but she is still in honeymood mode after getting married a couple of years ago and is always going out to dinner or on vacations, etc. I guess that's why I do so well in a community board type setting. I do my socializing on the computer. lol . Yes I can do it with people in my non-cyber life but I find that I don't share that much in common with them. They are far too busy themselves and have interests totally different than my own.

Stress has the opposite effect on my appetite. I don't eat and if I eat the wrong thing I get terrible acid indigestion.

Things are cetainly not easier than they were in the past. We have fast and processed foods, technology so people can contact you anywhere-anytime, a culture of over achievement where people actually feel guilty having downtime, more of a me society instead of a we society, a 24 hour news cycle, etc. That is why I am drawn to the past when things were not easy, but certainly simpler than they are today.

 

[Helen Troy]

(I know you Americans have had ready made meals in plenty in your supermarkets longer than us Norwegians, but this observation might still apply.)

Back in the good old days, ready-made meals where expensive and not something you ate every day. I have been told that up in the North of Norway in the 50s, where lovely, fresh fish was on the dinner table almost every day, they served ready made fish pudding from the store at the really big, nice dinners. It was considered a luxury!

The point is, today, ready-made food is often the cheapest food, and cooking from scratch can often be more expensive than ready-made. And it's ready-made is of poor quality and bad for you. This does not only cause people to get overweight, and making it possible to be overweight and undernourished, (lacking important vitamins and minerals,) at the same time. It is also the main reason that obesity is a problem more and more connected to the poor people.

Dieting are also a contributing factor to the obesity problem: A serious, resent study by The University of California shows that no matter what diet people used, most of them had back what they lost and often gained even more when the diet ends! Some of the reasons for this is that dieting, (when ingesting less calories than the body uses,) can mess with the body's metabolism. What happens is that you trick your body into "thinking" that you live in a food-deficit place. And, clever as the body is, it does the only logical thing: It puts something aside for a rainy day. It builds reserves. Fat reserves on your body. The result is that people who have dieted a lot, often gains weight much more easily even on a healthy diet than they normally would. VLCD (very low calorie diets) and very low card-diets are especially harmful, since they also causes the body to "eat" it's own muscles, but no diets are healthy.

I really think dieting is more common now than back then, and I am guessing the diets were often different. (Drinking eight glasses of milk a day is not very low calorie, the milk back then was not skimmed.) The sad irony of it this days is that the more we worry about our weight, the heavier we get. Dieting is baaaaaaad!

I like the slow-food movement: It advocates making the food from scratch, buying local, fresh food, and enjoying eating it. I personally find cooking a nice meal, and baking all the bread we eat, to be a great stress reliever. Not to mention taking the time sitting down and eating dinner with my husband, enjoying the food and talking.

Good food and good time is healthy!

 

[Paisley]

I used to cook nearly all my own meals, but it took so much time: at least half an hour per night, and then four hours every Saturday making meals ahead. I was cooking my life away and decided to stop. Now I get a lot of my food from the grocery store deli. They make wonderful grilled salmon, carrot salad and chicken salad.

 

[Paisley]

True. But we don't have the gut necessary to digest grass even with dietary and medical supplements.

Haversack.

That's surprising. So much of the earth is covered with grass.

 

[rockyj]

How Right you are Miss Daisy

You're all so right. People ate smaller portions, but for lack of a better term, foods were "cleaner". None of the processed, filled with fillers and preservatives.
It's perfectly fine to be a meat and potato type of person. However, the notion of "farm fresh" has been over taken by "bulk foods". In the past 5 years or so, company's like Whole Foods are bringing back the idea of "farm fresh" foods, but they are so much more expensive, and even though they try, it's just not the same product that was available 50 years ago.
For the past 20 years or so we have gone through the "McDonaldization" of society. Is it just pure luck that the #1 killer of adults is heart disease? Or that the most prevalent illness of children and teens is Type 2 Diabetes, and coming up in second place are Dental Cavities? (this data is a few years old so forgive me if I'm a bit off, just too tired to look it up at the moment, but you get my point)
Also, we can look at the prevalence of GI disorders. Of course, such diseases like Crohn's Disease and Colitis have always been incredibly difficult to diagnose, and 50 years ago a majority of people had never even heard of such illnesses, so it might just be that a lot of people had them but didn't know it. They could have thought they had a sensitive stomach and just learned to live with it, rather than going to a doctor. However, especially in the past five years or so, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of apparent cases of IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome, this is completely different than something like Crohn's or Colitis, which are auto-immune diseases). But, my point is that all the sudden there is this increase in people with GI problems. Of course, IBS can be initiated by stress. However a lot of the people who are having the symptoms of it grew up in this fast food nation that we live in, on diets of processed, fried, filled and artificial foods. Again, maybe people just didn't talk about these things with their doctors back then. However I think a lot of it has to do with the significant changes in our diets over the past 5 decades or so.

Now let me just say, I should follow my own advice. I eat horribly. It doesn't help that I take prescribed steroids that make me incredibly hungry. However, like Kimberly said, when I do take the time to eat the right things, and I'm not talking about cutting the carbs, I'm talking about eating the right carbs, having a balanced diet, I feel so much better both physically and mentally. Being that I have Crohn's disease, balance is difficult. I can't eat a lot of veggies, and my diet is supposed to be pretty strict, it's called a "low residue" diet. But, I'm terrible with following it. I swear, it's all the steroids fault!! They make me eat all those cookies!! But, I know that I would feel better if I cut certain things out and stuck to more natural foods.

Hmm, maybe I'll look back on this thread the next time I get a craving for sweets. It could just give me the motivation I need to stick to something more natural
My sister feeds my 2 year old nephew only natural foods. Of course he gets the goodies, but she stays away from trans fats and saturated fats, just about anything artificial too. My nephew is an incredibly healthy little guy who is growing strong. She feeds him fish and meat and eggs, and is teaching him that snacks are OK, in moderation. She also somehow convinced the little guy that fruit is a special treat. So now when it's snack time if he has a choice between something like grapes or a nectarine or a cookie, he'll often choose the fruit. I think all these new studies are starting to make parents realize that America, in particular America's kids, have a serious diet problem. So, it seems that new parents are instilling better eating habits, so hopefully the rate of diabetes and obesity amongst teens will be in decline over the next decade as the new group of toddlers enter their teen years...

I raised my Daughter on natural foods. (It was easier here in Alaska then, There wasn't many fast food places at that time) She his alway been very healthy and most important Not many Doctor visits. Also works well on your pets

 

[Martinis at 8]

My understanding is that before WW1 most people ate with a spoon.

I know the reason for this, but any guesses as to why?

M8

 

[mikepara]

I know the reason for this, but any guesses as to why?

M8

Is it me or does that not make sense?

 

[Fletch]

Comparatively few people born before 1920 have their own teeth. Thus we can conclude that food before that point was primarily mooshy boiled vegetables and gruel.

 

[Atterbury Dodd]

Comparatively few people born before 1920 have their own teeth. Thus we can conclude that food before that point was primarily mooshy boiled vegetables and gruel.

Speaking of no teeth, has anyone heard of the health and dental studies done by Dr. Weston Price in the 20's-30's?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weston_A._Price_Foundation

 

[Vanessa Anne]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/64/a4439964.shtml

I keep thinking that I should do something about my terrible diet that seems to swing from weight watchers to big fat feeding frenzies. :rage:

I've often thought that I should simplify my diet and do a rationing type diet but not so severe (see above link). What I mean by that is spuds, bread, a bit of meat, a bit of cheese and lots of veg. There was a program on TV a while back where they took a family and made them eat and do all the hard work that was the norm during the 1940's -cleaning, gardning and of course walking everywhere!. Every member of the family lost weight and became much fitter and healthier by the end of the project.

So there you are, I'm off downstairs now for a bowl of ice cream nowlol
Perhaps the diet will start tomorrow...